Development of offshore and offshore arctic pipelines requires consideration of unique design challenges such as seafloor scour/erosion and gouging by ice features. There are several types of ice features that may produce scouring of the seafloor, including icebergs, first year ice ridge keels and multiyear ridge keels. Ice is continuously drifting due to the action of environmental loads (e.g. wind and ocean currents) and may produce seabed scouring whenever water depth becomes lower than ice draft. FIG. 1 shows a schematic representation of an ice gouging process.